


In Your Philosophy

by bratfarrar



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-03-02 14:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratfarrar/pseuds/bratfarrar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Iruka is an accidental book thief, Kakashi is by turns enigmatic and infuriating, and Mizuki is not the man he once was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which there is more plot than anticipated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kakairu_fest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kakairu_fest/gifts).



It perhaps says something about Iruka’s character that when he unlocked the gallery for the day and found that there was already someone inside, his reaction was neither to stop and consider the striking tableau formed by the biker (all black leather except for the flaming eyes on the helmet held under one arm) standing in front of the main painting of Michael the Archangel (with flowing fabric and feathers and _light_ ) nor to confront the man for breaking and entering (because although the door had been locked, nothing looked to be missing), but rather to snatch away the book that he held, because the cover displayed a naked angel and nearly-naked man embracing, and at Iruka’s heels came three dozen fifth graders.

The last exhibit at the gallery had featured nudity; Iruka still had occasional nightmares about Mrs. Nakamura’s sixth-grade class.

“You can reclaim it afterwards,” he said, aiming for ‘authoritative’ and landing closer to ‘slightly harassed’, and then a small tide of children poured in through the door behind him and swept through the room, intent on noisy chaos. They parted around the biker and rejoined without seeming to notice that he was even there. This was an oddity: children delighted in attacking strangers with questions, especially when they were supposed to be doing something else. _Perhaps I could have allowed him to keep it, after all,_ swam through Iruka’s mind, but then he dove in after the children and it was drowned in their tumult of chatter.

The teacher who trailed along in the children’s wake looked mostly still asleep. But between the two of them and the caffeine-manic mother who’d been roped into chaperoning, they managed to gather everyone more or less where Iruka wanted them. By the time he had them trying to guess at the religious symbolism in some of the stranger of the exhibit’s paintings, he’d completely forgotten about both the battered book shoved down the back of his jeans and its ineffable owner.

He was forcibly reminded two hours later when he went to sit down after the wave of children had swept out again and got jabbed in the back. A moment’s guilt, when he pulled it out and saw that he’d bent one of the corners, was followed by vague consternation when he realized that at some point during his session with the kids, he’d lost track of the book’s owner—and since the other man was now nowhere to be seen, that meant Iruka had managed to turn himself into an inadvertent book thief.

He checked inside the front cover, in the dim hope it contained a name or address or _something_ , but found only a list of numbers marching down the outside edge of the front page. Page numbers, he guessed after a minute of staring at them blankly, and tried the first one.

Two paragraphs in, and he snapped the book shut, feeling his face grow hot and tight from blushing. It was porn, straight up and unapologetic, and Iruka couldn’t imagine how anyone could just read it nonchalantly in public, where people might catch a glimpse.

Well. Perhaps it was just as well he didn’t have a way to return the book. He was tempted to burn it instead—it could keep his copy of _The Communist Manifesto_ company once they finally finished with it in seminar.

That decided, he shoved the book down the back of his pants again so no one would see him with it on the way back to his dorm room.

 

 

But a week later, he couldn’t bring himself to actually do it—he went so far as to bum a lighter off one of his friends who smoked, but when he held it up to the _Manifesto_ , he heard his mother telling him, “Books are like people, Iruka. You should always be kind to them,” and then he had to take five minutes to not-cry. In the end he dropped the lighter in a drawer and took to tearing the pages out when he felt stressed in order to fold them into origami cranes.

(He had his first string of a hundred completed within 6 days; he told himself that was perfectly understandable for a college student working two jobs.)

He’d taken to storing _Waiting for Paradise_ in with his fencing gear, as his roommate Mizuki liked to treat Iruka’s things as his own, and was only put off by the stink of sweaty canvas; he also liked to tease (or, if Iruka was being completely honest with himself, outright mock) Iruka for his “prudishness”, and the book would give him enough fodder to drive Iruka near to homicide. Or to request a mid-semester rooming replacement—he worked in the registrar’s office once a week and had lunch occasionally with the college president: he had connections.

But he didn’t want it to come to that. For all that Mizuki liked to use words like scalpels (and not in medically-approved ways), he was still the first friend Iruka had made in college, remained his automatic choice for table companion during meals, had always been the only person Iruka felt comfortable complaining to about how hard it was to work nearly full-time while trying to grind through Leibnitz and Kant and Maxwell. They watched bad TV on the weekends (including, it must be admitted, the surprisingly less-racy HBO adaptation of the book in question) and picked through the local used bookstore together. Iruka was willing to use his unwashed fencing whites as a very bizarre safe to help protect that.

So when the owner of the book showed up at a Tuesday evening fencing practice, Iruka’s first reaction wasn’t guilt for having accidentally stolen the book in first place, or relief that he hadn’t yet finished tearing the pages out of Marx, meaning _Waiting for Paradise_ was still intact, but rather frustration that there wasn’t any way he could return the book without Mizuki noticing. For a wonder, he’d actually showed up to practice that night, even though he seemed more intent on criticizing his teammates’ forms than improving his own.

Granted, he was still clearly better than everyone there except Coach and a couple of the townies who spent their weekends competing, but some of the sophomores had begun to creep up on his heels, and Iruka couldn’t help but be a little worried how he’d react once they caught up—because they _would_ , if only because they practiced four times a week instead of just once.

It took Iruka a while to realize that the new townie cutting a swathe through, well, everyone, was the biker from the gallery. The white canvas made him look like almost a different person, and Iruka had his hands full with several one-on-one lessons with townie kids. (Not that Iruka was anywhere near the next-best fencer on the team, but he had a very strict eye for form and needed the money.)

He didn’t even notice that there was a new guy on the floor until there was an audible gasp from the other end of the gym and he looked over just in time to see Mizuki get driven off the end of the strip.

A moment later Chiyoko, his current student, nailed him in the crook of his elbow, exactly where she’d hit Iruka four times already, and that pretty much ended the lesson because a) she obviously didn’t need any more target practice for the evening, and b) next time they would be focusing on distance because Iruka was pretty sure she’d had managed to break skin through four layers of canvas.

“Okay, I think that’s enough drilling,” he forced himself to say, rather than gasp. “Why don’t you go watch some practice bouts—see if you can tell how they use distance.”

“What, like that?” Chiyoko asked as she pulled her mask off, waving it in the direction of where Mizuki was up against the townie. Iruka followed her gesture just in time to see Mizuki get hit by a perfectly executed stop-thrust. _Beautiful_ , he thought, and then _Mizuki’s going to lose it now_ , and he was right. As Mizuki became visibly frustrated, he lost control of everything, especially distance, so that he very nearly impaled himself on the last touch.

In a tournament, he would have restrained himself, for fear of getting carded. But this was just practice, and so he stormed off the strip without saluting or removing his mask or observing any of the other niceties.

“And there was an example of what you should never do after losing a match,” Iruka told Chiyoko, trying to ignore the sudden surge of worry that seemed to churn his stomach like too much acid. He looked down at her, and felt oddly comforted by the _well, duh_ face she made at him. “But don’t tell Mizuki I said that.”

“I try to stay away from Mizuki—he kind of scares me,” she admitted, then laughed a little. “Don’t _you_ tell him I said that, either.”

“Deal,” Iruka said, and pulled his own mask off, grimacing at how wet all the padding inside was.

“So you teach here, too?” An unfamiliar male voice said from behind him, and Iruka turned to see who it was.

“I’m sorry...?” he began, and then recognized the other man. “Oh! I’m _sorry_.” Unthinking, he began feeling at his pockets, as if _Waiting for Paradise_ could be summoned into existence simply by the force of his embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to—”

“This guy bothering you, Iruka?” Mizuki interrupted, appearing out of nowhere like the ninjas he always mocked in the movies.

Iruka might have felt betrayed by Chiyoko’s own sudden _dis_ appearance, except that he’d have followed suit if he wasn’t certain it would have caused all sorts of problems later. “Hi, Mizuki,” he said, in the vain hope that Mizuki might remember his manners if someone else served as an example. “No bothering going on here—just polite conversation.”

Mizuki scowled. “Then what were you apologizing for?”

This took a minute for Iruka to parse. “I—what—?”

“Your friend had just turned down my invitation for a bout,” the book’s owner interposed, earning Iruka’s undying gratitude for the rest of the evening.

It might have worked, had Mizuki not been so angry still over his loss.

“Oh, but you should,” he said, voice as sweet as the fake syrup they used in the dining hall. “Show him a thing or two.” Given how thoroughly _Mizuki_ had been trounced, that seemed highly unlikely, but as Iruka opened his mouth to say so, Mizuki kept on going. “In fact, why don’t you use this strip, and I’ll even play ref for you.” He began pulling Iruka over to the nearer of the _en garde_ lines.

It didn’t make sense—Mizuki liked to crow over his 49 to 2 win record against Iruka, so he couldn’t expect vicarious payback. Not that he was one for that anyway; Mizuki hated owing anyone anything. Possibly he was just looking to share the pain, but that wasn’t really his style: if he had a motto, it was more along the lines of ‘revenge over all’.

So when Iruka found himself saluting the book’s owner, he found himself torn, unsure of whether to try mouthing a warning or to simply go along with whatever Mizuki had planned. Fair play or loyalty?

And that’s when he realized what Mizuki had planned—although he should have guessed the moment Mizuki volunteered to play ref. Mizuki _hated_ reffing.

His first, gut reaction was to put his blade down and walk away, but as he stood, mask in hand, hesitating, his opponent smiled, ever so slightly, and winked. Well, Iruka thought he did. The sweatband falling down over one eye made it a little hard to be sure.

So he nodded back and pulled his mask on, and decided that if he was going to do this, he would do it textbook perfect. Mizuki could read most opponents like a book and play them like a cheap piano, but Iruka had _form_.

And so did the book’s owner, he found with growing delight. Mizuki might have meant to turn the bout into a vicarious grudge-match, mis-calling touches and right-of-way just to get one over on the guy who’d beaten him, but instead it unfolded into an exhibition piece, with Mizuki standing ignored on the sidelines as both fencers traded touches in what could have been a choreographed dance.

Iruka had never felt so pleased to lose 4-5.

But in the afterglow and chatter of the onlookers they’d garnered, he again lost track of the book’s owner, and by the time he remembered that he needed to return something, the other man was nowhere to be found.

“I hope you guys bout again next week,” Chiyoko said as Iruka helped pack up her gear. “That was _so cool_.”

“It really was,” he agreed, unable to suppress his smile at the still-fresh memory. “But he didn’t say anything about coming back—I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see him again.”

“I hope not,” Mizuki said from behind him. “Guy was a jerk—didn’t even tell anyone his name. I asked around.” He kicked at Iruka’s heel. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. The kid’s mom can help her pack the rest of her junk.”

Chiyoko nodded almost frantically, eyes wide and a little frightened, so Iruka put down the jacket he’d been folding and stood up. “Okay. I’ll see you for Saturday’s lesson, then.”

Mizuki spent the walk back to their dorm creating increasingly elaborate and improbable theories as to the identity and motivation of their mystery fencer, to the point that Iruka began to think he’d filled his water bottle with vodka again, although he wasn’t showing any physical signs of inebriation. It wasn’t like him—or, no. It wasn’t like the guy Iruka had sat next to in their very first seminar. But people changed over the course of college, and Iruka was beginning to wonder if Mizuki was still quite the same person he’d met as a freshman.

 

 

After the fencing incident, Iruka didn’t feel quite as guilty about his accidental book-theft. Obviously the owner wasn’t too upset over it, given he’d had the chance to demand _Waiting for Paradise_ back and had chosen not to. But Iruka wasn’t really sure what to do with it: he couldn’t very well dispose of it, now that he knew there was an actual possibility of returning it, but Mizuki had lost all inhibition about going through Iruka’s things. Not even sweaty whites were safe, now that he’d started showing up at all the fencing practices again, because he kept finding excuses to use Iruka’s gear instead of his own.

He was about to resort to stashing the book in his desk at the registrar’s office, when its owner reappeared—this time in the college coffee shop, where Iruka was eating a grilled cheese sandwich because the dining hall was serving “vegetarian chicken” and that always ended badly.

He was chewing his way through Kierkegaard, trying to wrap his head around the possibility of a faith so profound it was strengthened and not destroyed by paradox, when someone sat down across the table from him and said, “Do you have a favorite passage yet?”

Iruka blinked, unsure of whether he’d just imagined the question, and looked up from his book. There, back in black leather, though minus the motorcycle helmet, sat the owner of _Waiting for Paradise_. “What?”

“I know it’s hard to choose, but mine’s the section where Enoch is up on the mountain praying for protection and Qaphsiel appears, but has forgotten that humans wear clothing—”

At the mention of potential nakedness Iruka realized that the book in question most certainly wasn’t _Fear and Trembling_. “Wait, _what?_ ” He didn't remember _that_ from the TV show.

His companion managed to look hurt, despite his face being mostly covered by scarf and bandanna. “You mean to say that you stole my book and haven’t even bothered to read it?”

“Yes—no! I mean—” Iruka wasn’t sure what he meant, so he closed his eyes for a moment and tried to pull his thoughts together. “It was an accident. All I wanted was to avoid the corruption of minors. If you hadn’t disappeared, I would have returned it once they left.” He looked down at Kierkegaard again, because that made it a little easier to pretend he was talking to his fencing opponent of the other night and not this, this—well, owner of a well-used book of porn. “Through really, I was doing you a favor, if the cover is any indication of the sophistication of the writing.”

“Well, there’s sophistication and then there’s _sophistication_ ,” the other man leered—probably. It was a little hard to tell with so much of his face covered.

“That makes no sense at all,” Iruka stated flatly, by now thoroughly regretting having ever noticed _Waiting for Paradise_ in the first place, and wishing he’d stashed it in his bag and not under the bottom drawer of his desk. Perhaps if he could hand it over now, he’d never have to see this person again. “Look—” he glanced at the clock over the coffee shop’s counter. “I need to go to class and I don’t have the book with me right now. Can we meet back here later? Or I could mail it to you.”

“No, here’s fine,” the other man said, settling down in his chair as if he intended to not move from it until Iruka returned—which Iruka couldn’t help feeling spitefully pleased by, as that wouldn’t be for another three and a half hours.

“Okay, then.” Iruka shoved _Fear and Trembling_ into his army bag, collected the detritus of his lunch, and left without further goodbye.

He didn’t glance over his shoulder as he went through the door, but if he had, he would have been surprised to find that his table was already empty, with the book’s owner nowhere in sight.

 

 

The problem with getting irked, Iruka decided later that day, while standing in line for dinner, was that it distracted you from doing things like collecting contact information or setting a time and place for meeting. He’d retrieved the book from his room, but when he’d returned to the coffee shop, it had been empty aside from someone studying and a student worker sweeping the floor.

“Well, this is cozy,” a nearly-familiar voice said in his ear. Which, granted, it was—they hadn’t opened the doors to the dining hall yet, but students kept shoving themselves into the hallway to wait, so that Iruka was about two inches from becoming uncomfortably intimate with the backside of the guy standing in front of him.

“I suppose you could call it that,” he allowed, craning his neck to look behind him, as there wasn’t space to turn around properly. “Just to warn you, whatever they had you pay at the door, it was too much.”

“Not a fan of the food here?” the book’s owner asked, and somehow Iruka could tell he was smiling and not leering this time. “Ah, well. I’ll eat nearly anything.”

“You might have to,” Iruka laughed, but then the doors opened and they were spilled out into dining hall and he was distracted by the task of finding something edible.

They wound up at the same table, toward the back of the room. A few people gave them funny looks as they went by, but for the most part no one seemed to notice the strange biker who somehow managed to eat a plateful of pierogies and kielbasa without unwinding the scarf that nearly came up to his nose.

“Not bad,” he said at the end of it.

“It’s the one meal they can make reliably well,” Iruka agreed, feeling a bit more mellow than he had at the coffee shop—even vaguely hopeful. Perhaps if neither of them mentioned the book, they could have an actual conversation.

But, of course, that was when Mizuki chose to shove past Iruka’s chair and slam down his tray. “Making friends with a prospie, Iruka?” he all but snarled.

“No,” Iruka said, finally beginning to feel angry by Mizuki’s new attitude, instead of just worried or apologetic. “So good news: you didn’t just lose the college a potential student. But if you keep this up, you might be losing a friend.”

“What, over _him?_ ” Mizuki spat, jabbing an accusatory finger in the direction of the book’s owner, who made a sort of ‘who, me?’ gesture, but didn’t say anything. Iruka scrubbed at his face with his hands and wished they weren’t doing this in the dining hall, even if they were all but hidden in the back corner.

“No, Mizuki—I don’t even know his name.”

“Oh,” the book’s owner said. “I suppose you don’t. Call me Kakashi.” He held his hand out as though they’d just met, as though Mizuki wasn’t breathing fire and brimstone and unjustified rage down Iruka’s neck. Iruka stared at him for a long minute before deciding that everything was so messed up at this point that shaking hands couldn’t possibly make it worse.

“Iruka,” he answered, as blandly polite as he could manage given the circumstances. “But you’d probably figured that out by now.” Any moment now, he was sure, Mizuki would explode, and then it really would be time to request that mid-semester transfer. _Just one lousy book_ , he thought despairingly.

But instead of the expected explosion, Izumo and Kotetsu slid in across the table, next to Kakashi. “Hey, Iruka. This guy a prospie?” And then, before anyone had a chance to respond, “I’m Kotetsu, and Brainiac here is Izumo. Congratulations on surviving dinner—you lucked out tonight. No vegetarian chicken!”

Beside Iruka, Mizuki seemed to pull himself together, though Iruka could still feel the tension pouring off him like heat from a flame.

“His name’s Kakashi,” he said, tone not quite that of a sneer. “He says he’s not a prospie, though I can’t think why else anyone would subject themselves to the food here.”

“Perhaps I’m just an adventuresome diner.” Kakashi raised his visible eyebrow. “I’ve certainly had worse to eat than this. And I’m here because Iruka has a book of mine to return.”

“What’s the title?” Izumo demanded. “I have to know what on earth could entice Iruka away from work and study. He turned down Terry Pratchett last month. _Terry Pratchett!_ ”

“I didn’t actually read it,” Iruka tried to defend himself, but Kakashi said, “ _Waiting for Paradise_ ,” at the same time, so nobody heard him. There was a moment’s silence, in which he could see the wheels turning in Kotetsu and Izumo’s heads. “I think I’ll go get dessert,” he announced before they had a chance to say anything, and made a preemptive retreat from the table.

But Mizuki followed at his elbow, and Iruka braced himself for either mockery or vitriol. Or vitriolic mockery—Mizuki had proved himself versatile on more than one occasion, though never yet at Iruka’s expense. Not quite.

He was silent, though, as they picked through the desert options. “Did he really just loan you a book?” he finally asked while they were waiting by the microwave for a chance to heat their pieces of apple pie. “Why didn’t you just _tell_ me?” As olive branches went, it was about as much as Iruka could have hoped for.

“He didn’t so much loan it as I accidentally stole it,” he admitted, eyes fixed on his piece of pie, unwilling to look at Mizuki for fear of what he’d see there. “I knew—” he tried, and, “I thought—” before settling on, “It was just stupid, and I didn’t want anyone to find out.”

When Mizuki didn’t laugh, Iruka risked glancing over at him, and was relieved to find no trace of derision, only a rarely-worn pensive look. “No, but that’s perfect,” he said after a minute. “We’re watching the next episode tonight. He can come.”

Iruka had never been properly dumbfounded before; it took him the entirety of warming up the pie to find words again. “Wait, what? I thought you were going to rip his head off, and now you want to invite him to Friday night MST3K?”

“Sure,” Mizuki said casually. “None of us have read the books. He can tell us how HBO's version of _Waiting for Paradise_  compares.” He shot a sly look over at Iruka as they approached their table. “Unless we have another expert already.”

“I think Anko has them all memorized,” Iruka said, feeling inexplicably weak in the knees.

“Well, maybe she’s free tonight, too.” Mizuki sat in Iruka’s chair, swapping trays before he could protest, and leaned across the table toward Kakashi, ignoring Kotetsu and Izumo, who were laughing so hard their faces were in danger of winding up in their dinner. “Kakashi, I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

“Oh?” Kakashi set his elbow on an empty patch of his tray, and rested his chin carefully on his hand, eyebrow once again up, and face vacant of any readable expression. “Do tell.”

Iruka did his best to ignore his table companions and ate his pie with an intensity of focus he usually reserved for the intricacies of geometry, wondering as he did so what he’d done in his previous life to warrant all of this in his current one.

And if he could trust Mizuki’s apparent declaration of truce.

 

 

The truce held through the remainder of dinner and the following hunt for Anko—who was eventually run to ground on the back quad, drinking slightly illegal saké and reading Baudelaire to Satomi, the campus dog. Unexpected, given that she wasn’t on the list of people approved to take care of the dog—which Iruka knew because the previous year he’d been borrowed by the assistant dean to help compile and distribute said list after Satomi wound up somehow stranded on the roof of the auditorium lobby.

When he pointed that out to Anko, mostly because the inexplicable comradery between Mizuki and Kakashi made him itch to do something to distract from the feeling of an impending explosion, she laughed bitterly and drained the rest of her bottle. “I have orders to improve my shitty French accent, and the dog’s the only one who’ll listen for longer than five minutes. Also, Hana managed to double-book herself tonight with both dog-sitting duty and a date with Yuuma.” Who was the acknowledged dream-boat on campus, and also somehow the only person who didn’t know it. “I know my duty as a roommate.”

Mizuki inserted himself between Anko and Iruka, learning down so he could sling an arm over her shoulders while confiscating the bottle to check for any remaining saké. “Feel like blowing off your homework in favor of telling us how much the TV adaptation of _Waiting for Paradise_ sucks in comparison to the books?”

She shoved his arm away, but let him keep the empty bottle. “Depends. Who’s the ‘us’, and is the dog welcome? And will there be alcohol?”

“No alcohol,” Iruka said firmly, and directed his best stern-adult-who-must-be-obeyed face at Mizuki, because everyone in their group was even less legal than Anko (except, perhaps, Kakashi, who might have been any age between twenty and forty-five; gray hair and a mostly-covered face made it hard to judge).

“No alcohol,” Mizuki acquiesced, hands—one still holding the bottle—raised in mock surrender. “But I guess you can bring the dog, as long as you keep it away from me. And ‘us’ is just us.” He waved a careless hand behind them, and Anko turned to look.

“Huh,” she said after a moment’s study. “Who’s the biker? If he’s a prospie, I claim dibs when he shows up next year as a freshman.”

Iruka tilted his head back and implored the darkening heavens for patience. “Why does everyone keep assuming he’s a prospie? I do have living relatives, you know. He could be one of them.” He looked back down at Anko, whose expression suggested she couldn’t decide whether to be awkwardly sympathetic or just sarcastic. “Townie, not prospie, and his name’s Kakashi. Can we go watch some stupid TV now?”

“Yeah, okay,” she said after studying him for another minute. “Let me corral the dog.”

 

 

Apparently Anko understood ‘keep the dog away from me’ to mean ‘just don’t let it touch me’, because after Iruka somehow wound up sandwiched between Kakashi and Mizuki on a loveseat really built for only two, she decided to sit on his feet rather than take advantage of the common room’s remaining empty sofa and armchairs. Kotetsu and Izumo had dragged out one of their mattresses to share, as usual, because they both preferred to watch TV lying down and their room was just three doors away.

It was perhaps the most uncomfortable Iruka had ever been, barring the reception after his parents’ funeral. Once Izumo started the show up and everyone was intent on the too-small screen, Mizuki turned into the (non)date from hell. Inch by increasingly uncomfortable inch he began encroaching on and trespassing every physical boundary Iruka usually took for granted: knee to thigh to hip, arm to shoulder to the back of his neck. Twenty minutes into the episode, Iruka was nearly in Kakashi’s lap from his attempts to make a retreat; had his feet been free, he probably would have been.

Had it been anyone but Mizuki treating him like this, he probably would have issued a single warning before punching them—or at least verbally flaying them in a voice loud enough to draw others’ attention. But he and Mizuki had always been casual about personal space, and he just couldn’t figure out what was going on with his best friend and roommate. And he didn’t want to spoil the evening for everyone else, because Anko and Kakashi turned out to be a perfectly matched comedy duo—they had Izumo and Kotetsu laughing loud enough to gather an actual audience from the rest of the dorm floor. By the time Iruka was in Kakashi’s lap, there wasn’t really anywhere left for him to escape _to_ , other than away entirely.

The only thing making this even remotely bearable was that no one seemed to notice a thing; even Kakashi continued his dryly sarcastic commentary without a flinch or hesitation. His only acknowledgment of Iruka’s change in position was to shift his arm around to Iruka’s side, like a protective wall against Mizuki’s assault.

It made no sense. Why would Mizuki, of all people, be assaulting him? And why should Kakashi, a near-stranger whose only connection to him was a pornographic book, feel like sanctuary?

It made absolutely _no sense_.

The whole situation had him so thrown for a loop that when the main character’s parents were killed in a chariot chase gone wrong ( _utterly unhistorical_ , Kakashi cheerfully denounced) he had a moment of pure panic, the kind he hadn’t known since the early weeks of having to ride in cars again after he’d been orphaned.

He’d forgotten how much it felt like having jagged glass ground into his face.

“I need to get up,” he told the concealed side of Kakashi’s face, and slithered down across his thighs and down onto the floor, possibly kicking Anko in the process, only to wind up nearly smothered by an enthusiastic, happy terrier once he got there.

Anko pinched him, hard, to let him know of her displeasure, but Kakashi leaned over to ask, voice nearly drowned out by further chariot-caused catastrophe, “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” Iruka lied, gathering Satomi to his chest, where he could keep her sudden exuberance more or less contained. “Just wanted to go get your book while I was thinking of it—I’ll forget to return it otherwise.”

Mizuki also leaned down, shoving Anko out of the way (which earned him a punch to the thigh). “Is there a problem, Iruka?” Something onscreen must have been on fire, because his eyes seemed weirdly lit, almost red or orange in the reflection.

“No, I’ll—” He stood hastily, clutching at Satomi like a squirming shield. “I’ll be right back. Don’t stop the episode for me, Izumo,” he added, because Izumo had a thing about making sure everyone saw the entirety of whatever the group was watching, even if it meant making the rest of the group sit around waiting for half an hour.

And then he bolted for the elevator like all the hordes of Hell were at his heels.

He almost made it—the doors were just beginning to close—but Mizuki slithered in the moment before Iruka was safely away. “What did he do to you?” he demanded, eyes still the color of burning things; in Iruka’s arms, Satomi had gone still and almost rigid. He thought she might be growling, but his ears didn’t seem to be working properly—there was a growing hissing sound, like water on a hot stove, even as his own eyes felt like they were beginning to fill with smoke.

“Who?” he asked stupidly, taking a step back so that he was pressed against the elevator wall. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Mizuki spat, coming closer, ignoring that Satomi had begun barking at him. “I know he said something.” Without hesitation he crushed Iruka into the wall, so that the handrail bit at Iruka’s back and Satomi’s barks turned into whines of discomfort. Iruka’s lungs seemed to go heavy, like they’d been filled with ash, and every breath suddenly became a battle.

“He didn’t,” he choked. “I promise.”

Mizuki’s expression eased a little, and he reached up a possessive hand to Iruka’s face, curling his fingers into Iruka’s cheek, and stroking the scar across the bridge of Iruka’s nose with his thumb. He pressed down on it, as if it were blood that could still be smeared.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, his tone almost gentle, almost forgiving. “But it doesn’t matter, because you’re mine, Iruka. Mine, and only mine, and I have waited a long and hungry eternity for you.”

He leaned even closer, body hot against Iruka’s, intent hanging heavy upon his eyes and lips, and once again Iruka could not retreat any further—but this time he had no ally to protect him except one very small, squashed dog.

Who bit Mizuki on the jaw, just as he was within a hair’s-breadth of placing his mouth upon Iruka’s.

Then things happened very quickly. Too quickly for Iruka to track.

Mizuki jerked back with a shriek that rivaled any siren; Satomi was somehow flung out of Iruka’s arms and across the elevator; the elevator stopped; the doors opened; a person stepped in; in place of ash, Iruka was suddenly breathing static charge and the smell of thunder; all the world went very bright, as though made of lightning, and very still, like the moment before a storm.

“You!” Mizuki shrieked, even louder, spinning to face the intruder and shoving Iruka into the corner with so much force that he wound up on the floor, staring at the confrontation across and through the side of Satomi. He couldn’t tell if her chest was moving at all. His head and hip hurt.

His heart hurt.

“Yes, me,” the new person said, and he should have been Kakashi, except that he was all in white and his hair leapt above his head like flame hot enough to melt even the deepest dark and his face shone like the sun. “Just a point of clarification, please, and if you answer correctly I’ll step out of the elevator again and allow you to go on your way.”

Mizuki bared all his teeth; Iruka thought they looked sharper than should have been possible. “Well then?”

Not-Kakashi shrugged, cocking one hip so he could slouch against the elevator doorway, which remained open. The hall visible behind him was empty and very dark. “It’s a simple question, really: you said that Iruka was yours. Has he agreed?”

“What does it matter?” Mizuki howled, and now his fingers curled like claws.

“It’s just that the world hangs in the balance,” not-Kakashi said, and slouched a little further. “No matter at all. Why not answer the question so I can leave? I have other business elsewhere.”

And yet Mizuki hesitated, shifting his weight onto his toes, hunching his shoulders as if in preparation for a blow.

“Yes or no: Iruka agrees that he is yours.” Not-Kakashi yawned, settling more heavily against the doorframe.

Iruka thought: _that’s me he’s asking about_. And then, _I hope Satomi isn’t dead_. Followed by, _Izumo really, really better not have paused the episode_.

“Yes or no?” not-Kakashi repeated, but Mizuki didn’t answer. “It’s just one word, Mizuki. Surely you can manage that much. Yes?”

“No,” Iruka finally answered for himself, surprised to find that he still had a voice, though it fell closer to thought than speech. “Not even when he was still my friend.”

Not-Kakashi smiled then, like the noon sun over the dancing sea, and straightened. He suddenly seemed very tall—taller than doorframe or ceiling or anything but the sky. “I am very glad you finally realized that, Iruka. Perhaps it would be best if you closed your eyes now.”

So Iruka closed his eyes, and kept them closed even when Mizuki screamed, when the frame of the earth seemed to shake, when he seemed almost to see and hear with every cell, so that it didn’t matter how he clutched at his ears and curled around Satomi so that his face was pressed against her soft fur.

He kept them closed even as it seemed that all things must be shattered around him, leaving scarcely even the shadow of the thought _I am Iruka_ , until some great, gentle hand scooped him up and carried him away to somewhere far off. And all was soft and quiet and he slept, comforted by the steady rise and fall of Satomi’s side against his cheek.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A) Sorry I haven't gotten around to posting this until now!  
> B) Sorry there isn't an actual ending! But some stuff does at least get explained.

Iruka dreamed.

 

_“I’m surprised to find you still here, Captain,” a voice says, young and old all at once. “Usually you’re gone once the cleanup starts.”_

_“Ah, well,” says another voice, indefinably more ancient than the first, though (somehow) also more youthful. “Perhaps I simply like it here.” A hand strokes through Iruka’s hair._

_“Perhaps,” the first voice agrees in a tone that suggests profound skepticism. “As per your orders, all the demoniac’s belongings have been made findable by the moral authorities, and anything potentially distracting has been removed from the adjourning quarters. Once you release the … victim … back into the timeflow, paperwork and personal inclinations will be nudged so as to speed handling of the situation and minimize impact on the … victim.” Had he been awake, Iruka might have wondered at the heavy pauses surrounding the word ‘victim’, but the pillow beneath his cheek, though hard, is warm, and thought comes dangerously close to movement and waking._

_“Have you been reading the mortals’ books on organizational management again?” The ancient-youthful (and oddly familiar) voice asks. “It does terrible things to your syntax. Please stop.”_

_“Yes, Captain,” the first voice agrees dutifully. “Will you release him now so I can finish my job?”_

_“No rush,” the other voice says, lazy as the hand in Iruka’s hair. “Come sit down with me. Pet the dog. Rejoice in the wonders of Creation.”_

_“Yes, Captain,” the first voice agrees again, this time with a mixture of resignation and affection. Iruka’s dream (for surely he must still be sleeping) goes silent and still again, save for the slow drag of fingers across his scalp, and then he really does drift off into slumber again._

 

Iruka woke to the sound of Anko’s truly, undeniably shitty French accent, the smell of terrier, and the press of stiff, industrially-washed sheets against his cheek. He had the vague apprehension that something dreadful and irrevocable had happened, but he couldn’t remember what. Didn’t want to remember. It was easier (safer) to simply keep his eyes closed and pretend to still be asleep.

Except that halfway through ‘Les Litanies de Satan’, he could understand why Anko had resorted to practicing on dogs and unconscious people. “I’m pretty sure the ends of the lines are supposed to rhyme,” he finally said out of sheer self-defense, although he kept his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to see Anko’s expression when she stopped reading. Instead, he resettled himself and found that the reason he could smell terrier was that he had company on the bed.

“Satomi?” he added in question, beginning to card his fingers through soft fur.

“Yeah,” Anko said after a long silence. “Not sure how, exactly, but no one tried to take her away from you.” He could picture her biting her lip. “Pretty sure they should’ve, but that’s hardly the weirdest thing that’s happened tonight, so I haven’t asked about it.”

He opened one eye cautiously, and was rewarded with a very sterile-looking hospital room and Anko’s best poker face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She gave a furtive glance in what he guessed was the direction of the room’s door and leaned in over the bed rail. “You remember Kakashi, right? Biker guy, townie-not-prospie, could have been your relative but wasn’t?”

“Yes,” Iruka said slowly, both unsure of where she was going with this and utterly certain that he didn’t want to know. He shouldn’t have asked the question—should have kept his mouth shut and his eyes closed and his memory blank just a little longer.

Something tight in Anko’s expression eased, and she sat back in her chair. “Well, good, because no one else does. Not even Kotetsu and Izumo. I was starting to wonder if I’d gone crazy and just not noticed.” She sighed, running her fingers through her hair, which was even more disheveled than usual. “It’s been like tap-dancing on melting ice, trying to answer everyone’s questions without them coming to the wrong conclusions.”

“What?” It seemed like Iruka had been asking that an awful lot recently, so he followed it up with “Why’s that?” just to add some variety.

She glared at him. “Well, mostly because no one else remembers Kakashi. And I’m guessing that whatever happened in that elevator with you and Mizuki, he was mixed up in it somehow. So without him, the whole thing looks hinky. Well, more hinky.” Her expression melted into worry. “What the hell did happen, anyway? Every explanation I come up with seems about as plausible as a SyFy special.”

Perhaps his dream hadn’t been a dream—or at least not just a dream. “No, that’s about right,” Iruka said, and scrubbed at his suddenly prickling eyes. “Only think less Sharktopus and more Paradise Lost—not that they’ve done an adaptation of that, thank God.”

“Not yet,” Anko said, with more resignation than humor. “I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone notices it’s in the public domain.” She raised one eyebrow at him. “But I hope that’s not your way of saying that you and Mizuki got in the way of some angel/demon grudge match, because that’s even crazier than anything I’ve managed to string together.”

“No, not Mizuki. Just me.” Damn it—he refused to cry.

“Oh,” she said, and stared at him blankly for a minute. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he agreed. “And even though I kind of want to hate him at the moment, I’m really, really glad Kakashi showed up when he did.”

Biting her lip, Anko leaned over again and touched his face, where he could still feel the imprint of Mizuki’s fingers. It took an effort not to flinch. “Mizuki did this?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Iruka said, hands clenching into fists because it was the only way he could keep the tears back. “And—and the rest of it.” Now that he was admitting what had happened, he could no longer deny the ache in his hip and back, or the grinding pain in his head. “I don’t know exactly what was going on with him, but his eyes were definitely doing weird things at the end there, and I … I’m pretty sure he wasn’t planning to kiss me. He said he was hungry.”

“Oh,” Anko whispered, and Iruka said, “Yeah,” again, and they wound up just sitting quietly together until Hana and her date showed up to drive Anko and Satomi back to campus.

Iruka half-expected to be questioned too, once Anko was gone, but no one came, and even though his bed felt very cold and unfriendly without a dog to keep him company, he eventually slid back into sleep. At least there he could forget for a little while that his best friend had wanted to eat him.

 

The next morning brought Iruka nothing but a slightly lessened headache and a baffled gratitude for the continued lack of both questions and paperwork—and also the creeping suspicion that whatever force had removed Kakashi from almost everyone’s memories was somehow messing with those of the hospital staff: four different nurses seemed vaguely surprised to find the room occupied, even though they each brought an overflowing breakfast tray.

Anko arrived ten minutes after the last one, just as Iruka gave up on the possibility of eating everything and succumbed to the lure of attempting to build towers out of the Jello cubes.

“I claim the green ones once you’re done playing with your food,” she announced, depositing a very lumpy-looking dufflebag on the chair next to his bed. “Are you due to be visited soon?”

“I don’t think so,” Iruka said, abandoning his innovations in architecture. “Is that my duffle bag?”

“Yup.” Anko fought with the zipper for a moment before getting it open, revealing a somewhat disheveled Satomi, whose tail began beating the air the moment she saw Iruka. “I conned Security into letting me into your room to pack you clean clothes—you have very sorry taste in underwear, by the way.”

Ignoring that comment seemed safest. “How’d you manage that?” He handed her the bowl of Jello so he could lean over the bed-rail to pick up Satomi. Halfway into the motion his back attempted a small mutiny, but for once Satomi’s enthusiasm proved an asset and they both wound up back on the bed without any permanent damage—although Iruka had to take a moment to just breathe through the reawakened pain.

While he did that, Anko ate her way through all the green Jello, half the blue, and one cube each of the other colors, before swapping the bowl for a plate of syrup-drowned pancakes. “Well,” she said in between bites, “Everyone thinks the two of us just started dating and that’s why Mizuki finally flipped out.”

Iruka took a long and bemused moment to contemplate “Anko” and “dating” in the same sentence. Even without adding himself to the equation it refused to parse. “Why would anyone think that?”

“Because it’s what I told the EMTs, the police, the senior RA, and anyone else who looked like they might not let me go in the ambulance with you,” she said with surprising fierceness. I’ve done the wake-up-alone-in-the-hospital thing, and it _sucks_.” It most certainly did, as Iruka knew from past bitter experience. “And I had to tell them _some_ thing—with Kakashi inexplicable vanished from both the scene and everyone’s memories, that was the most plausible explanation I could come up with.”

“Thanks,” Iruka said. “I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here's how the rest of it would have gone: Iruka stays in the hospital for a day or two, because no one seems to care when he leaves, and no one's talked about him having to pay anything, and he decides to just not rock the boat because obviously something weird is going on and drawing attention to it seems like a potentially bad thing. He finds _Waiting for Paradise_ inexplicably tucked down the side of his bed one afternoon, just as he's become completely fed up with daytime TV, and reads it for giggles. It's just as florid as he'd expected, but there's a sincerity to it that would be charming if it didn't come wrapped around a ludicrous amount of implausible sex.
> 
> When he gets back to college, within a week it's become apparent just how much control over his social life he'd ceded to Mizuki without noticing. Everyone except Anko acts like they expect him to be traumatized (the dean sits down with him to see if he wants college support for therapy or anything), but mostly he's just relieved. And ashamed that it took such a dramatic turn of events to shake him loose from Mizuki's control.
> 
> He carries _Waiting for Paradise_ around all the time, on the off-chance that Kakashi wasn't a shared hallucination with Anko--and a few weeks after he's returned to college, when Iruka's closing up the art gallery one evening, Kakashi does, standing in front of the St. Michael painting again. But he's all in white this time, and when Anko questions him later, Iruka can't remember any other physical details except that he didn't have a shadow. (Neither does the sun.)
> 
> And he asks, "Why?"
> 
> And Kakashi says: "What will you do, once you leave this place?"
> 
> And Iruka says, "Teach, I suppose."
> 
> "What will you teach? And who?"
> 
> Iruka starts to answer, because elementary school art is a shoo-in at this point in his career, but given the context of the question he hesitates, eventually settling for, "You probably know the answer better than I do."
> 
> "Perhaps," Kakashi says, eyes smiling. "And perhaps we'll meet again, not too many years from now." He holds out a hand for the book Iruka took from him weeks (and all the ages of the world) ago, and Iruka hands it back dumbly, unsure of whether to be terrified or elated at the possibility. "Go finish locking up. I can see myself out."
> 
> So Iruka turns out the lights and locks the doors and sets the alarm. He doesn't look back to where he left Kakashi, but when he walks by the outside of the gallery on his way to dinner, he can still see a light shining in the gallery where it should be dark.

**Author's Note:**

> All hail [TKodami](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TKodami), who graciously agreed to do an emergency beta for me, despite not being in _Naruto_ fandom at all. This would have probably stalled out about a third of the way in without her cheerleading, and certainly would be a much bumpier read without her edits.
> 
> The original prompt was: "Demon!AU Where Kakashi is a soul harvesting demon on earth to do his job and Iruka is a university student. The two are friendly with each other, maybe a little flirtatious when one day Iruka's name comes up on Kakashi's list of souls to take."
> 
> Obviously things took a bit of a left turn.


End file.
